I would think that the process of mapping drives would be a mature and simple process in Windows. Taking into account all the years that Windows from XP through Windows 8 there is no reason for these random hardships. The difficulties with mapped drives is so random that one can’t pinpoint the issues. For example, client buys 1o computers all the same and 1 out of the 10 computers won’t keep the network drives connected.

One of the first fixes to mapped drive connections is to use the net use command in a batch file. There is plenty of sites out there that explains in detail how to use the net use command. However, I have found a minor detail not described in earlier postings. When creating a batch file be sure to use all lower-case. At least in my situation with 2 Windows 7 computers the net use command would not work in upper-case.

Secondly, I’ve had issues with the mapped network drive batch files consistently working. From the Technet website I used this info to manually delete the drives because a reboot and a normal disconnect would not work for me.

Steps:

a. Click Start, click Run, type REGEDIT, and then click OK.

b. Locate and click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache

c. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

d. Type SilentForcedAutoReconnect , and then press ENTER to name the value.

e. Double-click SilentForcedAutoReconnect .

f. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

I also have had issues getting the persistent flag to work properly. Yes, I have tried just cutting and pasting. Here is what I had to do on 2 different Windows computers to get the connections to work.

Created the batch file to map the network drives. I set it up in task manager with a 30 second delay after computer startup.

The 2nd computer required me to put in a batch file to delete the current mapped drives on reboot and then another task to connect them after a 30 second delay.

There are just a lot of options out there that it can be a real time consuming issue. Right now I am looking at 6 open tabs in Chrome with info on mapped drives and I used each tab to figure out how to resolve this issue.